Piston cooling jets may be mounted to an engine crankcase proximate to a crankshaft. Each piston cooling jet may be fastened to the crankcase with a banjo bolt. The banjo bolt extends into an oil chamber in the crankcase, thereby allowing pressurized oil to flow into the piston cooling jet and spray upwards onto a bottom side of a piston during engine operation. Such cooling is often used with high compression and/or turbocharged engines.
FIG. 1 illustrates a known piston cooling jet 10. As shown, the piston cooling jet 10 is made from several different components, including one or more nozzles 14, a valve housing 16, a valve lid 12, a bracket 18, a spring, and a ball (not shown in FIG. 1) that are assembled together.
A typical piston cooling jet is formed of metal. In particular, piston cooling jets are typically formed of steel or aluminum. It has been found that forming the piston cooling jet is expensive, due to the cost of the material for the metal component. Further, the forming and bending of oil channel pipes along with the joining operations used to mate individual components to each other may be complex.